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From: ceej@.ai.mit.edu (Chris Hillery)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.audio
Subject: MED things
Message-ID: <13748@life.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 6 Mar 91 09:26:27 GMT
Sender: news@ai.mit.edu
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 65

I just read a couple of articles about people's trouble with MED.  I don't want
folk to stop using this, as I think it's the best around, so I'll offer a few
suggestions:

First off, this program is not really SoundTracker/NoiseTracker compatible, so
don't give it bad marks for not working with ST/NT modules right.  It does it
right, to the best of its abilities.  It (MED 2.13, anyway) translates NT
modules as it loads to fix most gross differences in the commands (F00 for
pattern break, for example), so you can play them; it also relegates tempo
settings 1-16 (I believe) to NoiseTracker speeds.  However, these speeds are
slightly skewed from the real speeds, for some reason; I'd assume that MEDs
method of timing is not the same as NT's.  It's a fairly simple matter to
correct this, really, by changing the speeds to the correct MED values; I'm
writing a program to do just this on an automated basis.  It's possible that
MED does sound right on PAL machines for the same reason that some NT modules
do (different Vblank sync rate); I haven't had the chance to work with a PAL
Amiga to see.  (MED's speeds are also more logical and flexible than NT's; 
they are in beats/minute, 16 lines/beat, so far as I can tell).

However, there are more serious problems when saving a Med song as a Noise-
Tracker module.  This is due quite literally to the fact that MED is a better
program than NT.  Many features of MED are just not available in NT and the 
like that I have seen (double-time notes, for example, as well as varying
pattern lengths which is VERY handy), and so any song which uses these features
will naturally sound absolutely bazookas on a normal NT-player.  Also, as
mentioned before, MED's speeds are completely different, and one can't build
a one-to-one correspondence from MED speeds to NT speeds as one can the other
way.  This is the main drawback to MED, in my opinion, but it's a price I'm
easily willing to pay for the much greater power MED offers.  What the world
needs is a good background MED module-player (the one included isn't too bad,
but could be better and perhaps will be in 3.0).  Come to that, we could 
really use a good NT-module player too...  Anyway, I would assume that this 
is the answer to the poster who couldn't get MED modules to play in a NT-mod
player.  He also said it sounded as if some sample lengths were corrupt and
playing parts of other samples; I've heard this in many many NT-mods and I
honestly think it's either a fault of many players (which would not surprise
me) or possibly inherent for some bizarre reason in the NT-mod format.  Either
way, I don't think MED is to blame.

The other poster who couldn't get IFF-sounds to load:  were these sounds be
any chance saved out from NoiseTracker or SoundTracker?  I know for certain
that NoiseTracker 1.2 and possibly many others save out bad IFF samples.
Audio Master cannot load these either (or rather, chokes for a while and then
says "Bad IFF: Loading as RAW", allowing you to chop off the little garbage
header and save it out as a good IFF).  MED has never given me any problems
with IFF loading when the file it was asked to load was good.  

This poster also mentioned that he couldn't get NT-mods to load correctly.
I don't know what it is about NT-mod format, but it seems to be seriously
prone to odd flaws that make no difference to one program but totally be-
wilder another.  I have had modules that, when loaded into MED, played random
garbage with no discernable sound at all, but play just fine when loaded into
IntuiTracker or NoiseTracker.  I don't understand it, but since many variations
of this have occured (some programs can load it, others screw it up) I really
can't blame MED.  Unfortunately I don't know of a solution either.

To sum:  Please keep using MED!  I have yet to see an editor with fewer flaws
or more power.  To me consistent multitasking alone is enough to make it
worth using.  Things can only get better with 3.0!

Happy Tracking!

Ceej
aka Chris Hillery
ceej@rpi.edu